Dracula eBook

With their going it seemed as if some evil presence
had departed, for the dogs frisked about and barked
merrily as they made sudden darts at their prostrate
foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them
in the air with vicious shakes. We all seemed
to find our spirits rise. Whether it was the
purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening
of the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced
by finding ourselves in the open I know not, but most
certainly the shadow of dread seemed to slip from
us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost
something of its grim significance, though we did not
slacken a whit in our resolution. We closed the
outer door and barred and locked it, and bringing
the dogs with us, began our search of the house.
We found nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary
proportions, and all untouched save for my own footsteps
when I had made my first visit. Never once did
the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even
when we returned to the chapel they frisked about
as though they had been rabbit hunting in a summer
wood.

The morning was quickening in the east when we emerged
from the front. Dr. Van Helsing had taken the
key of the hall door from the bunch, and locked the
door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his
pocket when he had done.

“So far,” he said, “our night has
been eminently successful. No harm has come
to us such as I feared might be and yet we have ascertained
how many boxes are missing. More than all do
I rejoice that this, our first, and perhaps our most
difficult and dangerous, step has been accomplished
without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam
Mina or troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts
with sights and sounds and smells of horror which
she might never forget. One lesson, too, we
have learned, if it be allowable to argue a particulari,
that the brute beasts which are to the Count’s
command are yet themselves not amenable to his spiritual
power, for look, these rats that would come to his
call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves
to your going and to that poor mother’s cry,
though they come to him, they run pell-mell from the
so little dogs of my friend Arthur. We have other
matters before us, other dangers, other fears, and
that monster . . . He has not used his power
over the brute world for the only or the last time
tonight. So be it that he has gone elsewhere.
Good! It has given us opportunity to cry ‘check’
in some ways in this chess game, which we play for
the stake of human souls. And now let us go
home. The dawn is close at hand, and we have
reason to be content with our first night’s
work. It may be ordained that we have many nights
and days to follow, if full of peril, but we must go
on, and from no danger shall we shrink.”

The house was silent when we got back, save for some
poor creature who was screaming away in one of the
distant wards, and a low, moaning sound from Renfield’s
room. The poor wretch was doubtless torturing
himself, after the manner of the insane, with needless
thoughts of pain.